Fifty Shades of Wack

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Caught this on Netflix out of sheer curiosity and as someone who actually liked the first A Haunted House, this was just awful. I haven't even watched Fifty Shades of Grey, but I pretty much know the gist of it and with that said, I don't think the source material was good fodder for a spoof movie. This seems like the kind of material that would work best as a 5 minute skit or something, but here they stretch it out for an entire movie and fuck is it ever a chore to watch. I've seen plenty of bad comedies, but this is one that's unfunny on so many levels. First of all, a lot of this is nothing but sex jokes. And yes, I know that's pretty much a given with it being a Fifty Shades spoof, but there's too many of them and pretty much all of them feel like the kind of jokes I would've told my friends in high school.

Another way it fails is being a spoof movie in 2016 because this is one that also focuses on pop culture references and there are so many godawful ones here. We get so many topical references like Kim Kardashian's "scandalous" photoshoot, Whiplash, The Weekend, Bill Cosby, Magic Mike, Osama Bin Laden (The most topical of them all.), Black Lives Matter and even a reference to a Vine meme. Scary Movie may have had moments that haven't stood the test of time, but at least the things they were satirizing were relevant at the time. The majority of these references were dated on arrival. They even make references to random movies just because like The Book of Eli, the show Empire and movies with Cuba Gooding Jr. and I call these references because that's what they are. They aren't jokes, they are just references to things that exist.

Then there's the gross-out which is also quite frequent with stuff like a disgusting looking bellybutton, shit jokes and an unrealistically long prosthetic cock. It even fails at making its gross-out gross as I was just rolling my eyes at them more than anything. Let's also not forget how predictable some of these jokes are. At the very beginning there was this joke where the lead actress was trying to open a door and I kept saying to myself out loud "It's a pull door, it's a pull door, it's a pull door, it's a pull door."

Then there's this one character that I hated and that was this white girl character that acts like she's black. I loathed every moment she was in and I just wanted something bad to happen to her. It never happened. Nothing cathartic happened to her. No slapstick, no misery or her being put out of her misery for that matter. All that happened was her getting rewarded with countless sex throughout the whole thing.

And another thing, I don't think I've ever seen a movie that went so out of its way to offend everyone, but does it in the worst way. Not only does it go for the cheapest stereotypes possible, but it also manages to insult the intelligence of everyone that's watching and pretty much makes every character look like idiots. Even though I wish more comedies would take risks these days instead of playing it safe, this is not the way to do it.

There were even a couple things that happened to me while watching this. There were at least a couple moments where I paused the fucker out of disbelief. I just couldn't believe what was just said. I was that shocked by those moments. Then there was another moment which led me to pause the movie. See, the TV was on in the background and when I noticed that a classic episode of The Simpsons was on, I paused this abortion immediately to take a break and watch something that's actually funny. Also in case you're wondering the episode was Homer Goes to College.

Was there anything good about it at all? Well, there were actually a few jokes every now and then that I thought were a trifle bit clever even though they are outweighed by the hundreds and hundreds of painfully unfunny ones. I guess the cast also did the best they could with the material they were given (Except for that one girl who only succeeded at being annoying.) and if I'm being honest, I did at least appreciate Marlon Wayons comedic energy. He at least seemed like he was having fun. That didn't necessarily make it a lot easier to watch, but at least he wasn't phoning it in. Well, at least acting-wise since he also had a hand in the script. Now, Marlon Wayons can be a really funny guy, but like I said, this is something that would've been more salvageable as a 5-10 minute sketch or a 22 minute episode of something. Spoofing 50 Shades of Grey isn't enough to carry a feature-length picture. I'm honestly surprised they didn't add in a couple other things to spoof to pad it out to feature length, but other than a Whiplash spoof and an overly-long Magic Mike parody, it surprisingly sticks to its main source material.

I guess this isn't really a positive, but riffing my way through this movie did help me get through it at times. These are just a few of these quips I made.

"Ooh, I wish I could find a man the size of this to satisfy me... This shit better be gluten-free."

It's not. Please die.

"Who wrote this, a third grader?"

*Raises finger* Nah, too easy.

"If it wasn't for Denzel Washington, Flight would've been a fucking Soul Plane!"

Don't reference movies that are probably funnier than you.

Other than that, this movie didn't really give me much. As far as spoof movies go, this is one of the worst ones I've ever seen. I even feel like I'm being to generous with my rating and feel like it deserves a 1/10, but I still think it had a few too many OK/decent jokes for me to justify that rating. It's still an abomination though and is the epitome of what is wrong with spoofs nowadays.